I have now attended six of the specialist energy/greenhouse gas/climate lectures held by an informal but highly academically qualified grouping. Specialist speakers have come from all over the world and a number of interesting and important conclusions can be drawn.

These are my personal conclusions based on the desirability, of having an open mind but also a commitment to ensuring that agriculture should not be unfairly disadvantaged in the development of climate change policies. There is little point in intemperate outpourings from people with more grudge than qualification. So where is the state of knowledge across an important and emotional subject?

There is an across-the-board acceptance that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased and that some global increase in temperatures is taking place.

In the climate change phenomenon, there are winners and losers, both agriculturally and industrially. Coal and fossil fuel producers stand to lose while renewable energy entrepreneurs are already winning. Agriculture and farms as sites for renewable energy installations are already seeing significant development but nothing as significant as in countries like Germany, where policy has encouraged real farmer participation in the sector.

For hardcore farming itself, cattle and tillage have both come under the microscope but, scientifically, there are a number of points to be made. The main greenhouse gas is methane – there is now an acceptance that methane is much less damaging than initially thought because it lasts for a short time in the atmosphere but also because it is comparable in many ways to water vapour, which is present in enormous quantities in the atmosphere.

We are also seeing real progress in developing animal feed supplements that reduce the quantities of methane produced by bovines. On the tillage side, the place of CAN and urea as nitrogen fertilisers is becoming better understood with CAN unsuitable for waterlogged soils but urea emitting ammonia on dry soils. While we may eventually see some kind of carbon footprint per farm, we should not let the energy and transport sides escape scrutiny.

So what of global warming? There are clear indications that the Gulf Stream, which has given Ireland its mild climate, is less vigorous than it was. Nobody seems quite sure to what extent this is caused by warming in the Arctic but it is an unwelcome development to put it at its mildest.

What is clear is that the regular oscillations of the sun have, together with human-produced carbon dioxide, produced some global warming with the sun’s oscillations seeming to be the more important.

The role of agriculture and cattle production is way down the list of culprits and the scope for reducing the agriculture sector’s greenhouse gas contribution is very real.

It would not be sensible to revisit Ireland’s farm growth aspirations at this stage.